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Read the Bill Act
Oct 5, 2007

Quote of the Day:

"Frankly, it is too easy to pass bills. Bills flow through this body like water."
-- Sen. Jeff Sessions

In our system of government, Senators have longer terms than Representatives. In theory, this gives them freedom to be more far-sighted and more statesmanlike than Representatives, who are constantly seeking re-election. Sometimes, democratic passions cause the House to pass popular but seriously flawed bills, and the framers of the Constitution created the Senate so that cooler heads would prevail. It seemed to work: for generations the Senate was considered the "world's greatest deliberative body."

But today, the Senate passes most bills unread and without any deliberation. In fact, bills are often rushed through without Senators even knowing about them. Their "consent" to a bill is assumed, and this leads  to bills being passed by "unanimous consent." It is a process called "hotlining." Paul Jacob has a good column on it this week.

A Senator's office is notified by phone of a bill that both the majority leader and minority leader would like to see passed without debate. The Senator's staff is given a deadline to place a "hold" on the bill. A hold can be placed for any number of reasons - the Senator may want to obstruct passage of the bill, as Sen. Stevens famously tried to obstruct the Legislative Transparency and Accountability Act last year. Or, a Senator may place a hold if he or she wants to introduce an amendment. Or maybe the Senator just wants time to read and consider the bill. But there are many occasions when Senators aren't even given a fair chance to place a hold. As Sen. Sessions of Alabama tells it:

"In each Senate office there are three telephones with hotline buttons on them. Most evenings, sometimes after business hours, these phones begin to ring. The calls are from the Republican and the Democratic leaders to each of their Members, asking consent to pass this or that bill--not consider the bill or have debate on the bill but to pass it. Those calls will normally give a deadline. If the staff do not call back in 30 minutes, the bill passes. Boom. It can be 500 pages. In many offices, when staffers do not know anything about the bill, they usually ignore the hotline and let the bill pass without even informing their Senators. If the staff miss the hotline, or do not know about it or were not around, the Senator is deemed to have consented to the passage of some bill which might be quite an important piece of information." Source: Sessions' website

Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma elaborates:
"During the 109th Congress (2005-2006), 341 bills and joint resolutions were passed by the Senate. According to the Congressional Research Service, only 21 of those bills received a roll call vote on the Senate floor. That means 94 percent of law making measures that were passed through the Senate were passed by UC or by voice vote. A large majority of these were hotlined and therefore excluded from full and open debate and the amendment process. In the 109th Congress, 1,408 bills, resolutions, or nominations were attempted to be hotlined, with as many as 40 measures being hotlined in a single day." Source: Coburn's website

No wonder government grows so quickly. A Senator may have a headache and call it a night, and when he returns to his office the next day he finds out he "consented" to several bills he knew nothing about. Calling the Senate a "rubber stamp" is an insult to rubber stamps.

And it is we the people who suffer. We are the ones who must pay for the government's wasteful programs and obey its unnecessary laws. The least we should expect is that our representatatives in Congress read and understand the bills they pass. The least we should expect is that all bills actually come to a floor vote, and are not "passed" via telephone messages. That is why we must pressure Congress to pass the Read the Bills Act.

Tell Congress you are disgusted by procedures such as the Senate's hotlining process. Tell them that they should read and understand every bill they want passed, and that bills should actually be voted on in both chambers. Tell them to pass the Read the Bills Act.

Also, please help spread the word about the Read the Bills Act. One way to do this is through the Read the Bills Act Coalition. By adding your blog or website to the Coalition, you will direct your readers to the RTBA. In return, your site will be linked to on our blog. Go here for details.

Finally, last week the Senate passed 8 bills amounting to 462 pages of legislation. The House passed 17 bills and 295 pages. Almost all of them are worthy of comment, but we just don't have the time. The list of bills can be found at the bottom of the blog version of this Dispatch.

Thank you for being a DC Downsizer.

Sincerely,

James Wilson
Assistant to the President
DownsizeDC.org

(Note from Rebecca) This is NOT my own writing. This was received in an email by me and I wanted to find a way to share it with Care2 folks. My thanks for writing this go to James Wilson. I'm hoping he doesn't mind my sharing it here with you all.  Please go to the site and sign up!
Visibility: Everyone
Posted: Friday October 5, 2007, 1:53 am
Tags: house law states bush united politics senate legislation congress voting stupidity criminal Hypocracy [add/edit tags]

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